biographical sketches of towering figuressuch as internist Victor McKusick (authorof the catalog Mendelian Inheritance inMan) as well as lesser-known contributorssuch as blood-group geneticist LaurenceSnyder. Comfort does not provide a com-prehensive history of human genetics; therole of key techniques and tools, particu-larly in the molecular era, likewise remainsto be written. But the book covers muchground and accomplishes a great deal in aspare 246 pages of text. Given how radi-cally its author recasts the history of Amer-ican eugenics, The Science of Human Per-fection is a remarkably unpolemical work.Comfort does not seek to rehabilitate eugen-ics, but he does compel the reader to recog-nize that the American impulse to improvehealth through science was a key ingredientof eugenics and remains a driver of medicalgenetics today.

In the preface to his seminal What Is Life? Erwin Schrödinger recognized a predic- ament facing those who attempt a grandsynthesis rather than remain on the safeground of their narrow fields of specializa-tion: “I see no other escape from this dilemma(lest our true aim be lost forever) than thatsome of us should venture to embark on a syn-thesis of facts and theories, albeit with secondhand and incomplete knowledge of some ofthem—and at the risk of making fools of our-selves” (1). As it turned out, Schrödinger wasno fool (at least not with regard to his insightsinto the fundamental principles of science).In Cells to Civilizations, Enrico Coen, aplant developmental biologist at the JohnInnes Center and author of the acclaimedThe Art of Genes (2), takes his inspirationThe reviewer is in the School of Life Sciences and the Centerfor Biology and Society, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ85287–4501, USA. E-mail: manfred.laubichler@asu.edu(albeit not explicitly) from Schrödinger.This attempt at a grand theoretical synthesiswithin biology explores the transformativepowers and creative forces that have broughtabout the living world from the first cells tothe latest developments in cultural and tech-nological evolution.Coen focuses on similarities (withoutignoring the differences) among four majorprocesses of life: evolution,The first four principles reformulate thebasic argument for evolution by means ofnatural selection. All systems that show pop-ulation variation, persistence (a more gen-eral formulation for heredity), reinforcement(capturing the cumulative effects of selec-tion), and competition will change throughtime and develop creative solutions to envi-ronmental challenges. The next three princi-ples can best be illustrated (more as a matterof convenience than intuition) in the contextof development. Here we have cooperation(among parts at all levels and among levels),combinatorial richness (as a result of inter-actions among modular elements), and recur-rence. The third accounts for the cumulativeeffects of history, both within a system and inits complex interactions with multiple envi-ronments (for example, think niche construc-tion, canalization, and constraints). The bulkof the book offers an exposition of these prin-ciples as they apply to evolution, develop-ment, learning, and culture.Coen responds to a real and damaginglack of theory within the biological sciences,which are still largely dominated by empiri-cism in overdrive. With few accepted generalprinciples, the life sciences have developeda large number of domain-specific general-izations and concepts. Complexity theoryrepresents one recent unifying attempt, butits core abstractions are difficult to com-municate (3). What has been missing is aclearly formulated conceptual frameworkthat lucidly communicates the deep unity oflife’s fundamental properties and processes.